The demand for spices drove many across India’s shores. As new identities were being forged, foreign rulers established themselves at the ports of ancient India, shipping spices from the hills of Kerala to Arabia, to further Egypt and Mesopotamia. Chilli pepper, for example, was not common in Mughal cookery, and neither was local Indian food spicy. Portuguese traders from South America introduced it, and today it is a front-runner in a plate of well-spiced biryani.

Further into the 15th century, the Portuguese brought with them 300 other new plants, including tomatoes, potatoes, and papaya; all three integral to biryani. Arabs too should be credited with the spice trade before Vasco da Gama admitted that they had come to seek “Christians and Spices” in India. Arab traders discovered sea trade routes to India and other eastern countries producing spices. By the mid-16th century, the Malabar coast in South India became the principal producer of pepper and remained so for a while.

The timing was perfect. The rise of the Mughal Empire (1556-1707), the patrons of cooking, spread food systems and knowledge from the Mughal centres in the North to beyond. Bearing pilafs, leavened wheat breads, stuffed meat, braising and marinating techniques, and ultimately, what later would be the aromatic biryani, were all remnants of the glorious Mughal Empire.

David Burton maintains that it was “the whiff of spice” that lured Britain to India.

1526: Mughals and Meat

The Mughals were herdsmen who moved with their flock of sheep, goats and horses, often cooking over a campfire. The aromatic pilau in early cookery of the shepherds from Central Asia was an essential meat-and-rice dish, a precursor to biryani. While a centrepiece on many tables in Persia, the pilau had yet to undergo another transformation in Hindustan.

Babur, the first Mughal emperor, hated Hindustani cuisine. He came from a culture that took great pleasure in meat-eating. Having spent much of his time in the mountains of Samarkand, Babur often lamented his nomadic, horse-riding life and archived his awful food experiences. The shepherd from Central Asia describes vomiting after a Friday evening meal of rabbit stew, saffron-flavoured meat dressed in oil and served on a thin chapatti, one of his many lamenting memories of the cuisine.

When Babur conquered Hindustan, vegetarian food was introducing new hierarchies of purity in Indian society. For Mughals, however, it meant something else. Meat was meant for Kings, warriors and hunters. Like Mughals, who were burdened with the responsibility of governance, relied on a meaty diet.

The Mughal appetite for mutton and beef did not align with their new subjects, which was why only 4 of 50-60 cooks were retained from Babur’s predecessor, Ibrahim Lodhi.

Humayun, Babur’s son, however, would serve as the conduit. Humayun deployed Hindustani cooks in Persia; during exile, he entertained with Hindustani food. After15 years of exile in Afghanistan and Persia, ceding to Sher Shah Suri, the ruler of Bengal, Humayun reclaimed the throne in 1555. On his return, he matched his gluttony with expenditure on food, bringing with him Persian, Turkish, Arabic and Egyptian cooks honed under the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad. Additionally, Indian cooks from Sindh, presently Southern Pakistan, arrived with expertise developed during the Arab conquest in 713.

The class divide on the plate, however, continued. Among many European travellers, a French jeweller, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, witnessed the lack of flesh and fish in Hindu markets as compared to Muslim-governed areas where he saw the availability of sheep and pigeon.

This patchwork of Indian eating habits is also illustrated by Friar Sebastien Manrique, a Portuguese missionary on his way to Rome, who calls “Biring” [birinj], the principal and most substantial aromatic rice dish, cooked in innumerable ways as he strides through the bazaars of Lahore in the late 15th century.

David Burton in The Raj at the Table explains the spread of what was, still Pilau in India: “In Spain, with the addition of seafood and an emphasis on saffron, it became paella. In Italy, butter transformed it into risotto”.

In Hindustan, where Persia, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent clashed, Pilau had yet to undergo another transformation.

1556-1605: Persia and Pulao

Then came Akbar, the third Mughal Emperor, who focused on consolidating his local subjects. It’s said that Babur strengthened India’s links with Central Asia, Humayun introduced Persian influences, and Akbar created a synthesis of all three. This process of synthesis also went on in Akbar’s kitchen where the Persian Pilaf became Biryani.

It is during Akbar’s reign that the Persian culinary technique dumpukht [sealed slow cooking of aromatic spices in a lid pot], marinating meat in curd, followed by heaping partially cooked rice over meat; Biyani, a more decadent version of the classic Pilaf, was created. “The resultant biryani was a much spicier Indian version of the Persian pilau”, Lizzie Collingham describes in A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors.

The repertoire of Akbar’s kitchen, Ain-i-Akbari [Administration of Akbar] compiled by the courtier, Abu’l Fazl, explicates accounts of the emperor’s non-gluttonous habits and general avoidance of meat despite Akbar’s kitchen being the cradle of conception for Biryani. However, Abu’l Fazl does not give us directions for cooking Biryani but writes ‘it is made in various ways’, speaking to its inherent flexibility and capacity to absorb regional preferences.